Thibault Jehanne – Eskifjörður

CD album [se14]

Out October 2014. Digifile.

Eskifjörður, is an Icelandic town settled along the East fjords, still between two lively environments. The film relates without images, these spaces became entities. First, it’s the awakening of the earth, living, breathing : an entity sometimes hostile, extends into the landscape to overwhelming the rest. Men are discreet. To remain, they go from the land to the sea, and from the sea to the land, but also to die. The sea is nourishing, bountiful and generous, but it keeps with it these souls and reject these bodies, buried.

 

Eskifjörður, village islandais installé le long des fjords de l’est, demeure entre deux milieux animés. Le film rapporte sans images, ces espaces devenus entités. C’est d’abord le réveil de la terre, qui vit, qui respire : un être parfois hostile qui s’étend dans le paysage au point d’en submerger le reste. Les hommes s’y font discrets. Pour subsister ils passent de la terre à la mer et de la mer à la terre, mais c’est aussi pour y mourir. La mer est nourricière, abondante et généreuse, mais elle garde avec elle ces âmes et rejette ces corps, enterrés.

 

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 Reviews

Only twenty-five is Thibault Jehanne, but he has made some installation pieces and film soundtracks and one of these is now released: “Eskifjörður, is an Icelandic town settled along the East fjords, still between two lively environments”, I read on the website and it is a film without images (if I understood this well). Jehanne is a field recordist but one that may add a few tricks, such as sound manipulation, collage techniques and such like. The sounds are all from Iceland’s more rough natural landscapes, and water bursts and burps around here. It’s hard to tell if Jehanne uses any electronics or not, but in ‘Le Naufrage’ it seems so; that, or he uses so many field recordings together that it gathers this heavy drone like sound, like a cluster of organ tones being played. I am reminded here of some of the early The Hafler Trio (circa ‘Brain Song’) here, but throughout the use of the field recordings prevails here, it seems, and Jehanne puts them together in a very clever way. It’s music that is full of tension and attention for the details and by using collage like techniques he builds some excellent music, with a fine ear for subtle changes and rapid change-overs. It’s especially that mixture between the pure field recordings, the rumble of nature as it were, which works well in combination with those thicker washes of sound – either the pure untreated sounds but then heavily layered together or via some kind of electronic manipulation. Whatever it is, it’s not really important to know this. What counts is that this is a more than excellent release. A great new discovery in the area of field recorders with a strong voice of it’s own. (FdW)

In Vital Weekly 953

 

Thibault Jehanne

Thibault Jehanne

Thibault Jehanne

Thibault JEHANNE né le 30 avril 1989, vit et travaille à Caen ; capte l’insaisissable, manipule le temps par la composition de l’image et du son.

Website

Thibault Jehanne : CV

 

 

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